Naked
by Trevelyan Duke
Summary: She just wishes to know, you know? She couldn't take it if she died not knowing him. Maybe her true love was dancing naked right in front of her all along, but she was just too caught up with Ranma and his body to notice.
1. Magic

**Title: **Naked

**Author: **Trevelyan Duke

**Summary: **She just wishes to know, you know? She couldn't take it if she died not knowing him. Maybe her true love was dancing naked right in front of her all along, but she was just too caught up with Ranma and his body to notice.

**Author's Notes:** A couple of theses and physics experiments later, and I'm back. And graduating from high school in two months.

First things first. I fast forwarded the time a bit, and now my two favorite duel experts Ranma and Akane have met over a year ago. So they already know each other _very well_, period, if you know what I mean.

**Disclaimer:** Not mine, not yours, but Rumiko Takahashi's. Tada.

o

o

**Chapter One: _Magic_**

_When there is a woman, there is magic. –Ntozake Shange_

o

o

…forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine–

–_Wait, I think I counted that one already._

Back, back.

Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty…

"Fifty-one. 'The stars peep behind her and peer; and I laugh to see them whirl and flee, like a swarm of golden bees' starts at line fifty-one."

…fifty-one, fifty-two–

–_God, these things keep multiplying like mice._

Fifty-three, fifty-four, fifty-five…

"Very good, Saotome. At least we now know that you have an affinity to Percy Shelley, unlike _some_ people who haven't the attention span to last even an hour of English."

The class turned their heads towards the back of the class by the window where a cobalt-haired girl boringly propped her head on a bored, folded arm supported by a bored, aching elbow. She was palpably oblivious to the surprised faces her classmates wore, not to mention the piercing look the professor was shooting her and Saotome's wrinkled forehead that made him look like he was trying to get her to wake up through mental telepathy (or just plain constipated).

_Fifteen minutes more_…

The sky was the happiest shade of blue, and the cumulus clouds looked soft enough to sleep on… or eat, especially if a tuft were to be put on a stick and resembled sweet, tooth-decaying cotton candy. The sun was somewhere behind the huge, soft bunches of white, creating a silver lining at the edges of the clouds and making them look like heaven's very own cotton candy empire, complete with bright neon signs and spotlights and angels as haloed salespeople. And–

_Ooh, sperm kite!_

She absolutely adored those kites with long tails decked with ribbons, the one the kids from a few blocks away loved to fly during windy mornings. They always showed up in the sky to save her from a slow, boring death. Impeccable timing.

"Impeccable participation, Saotome, but this time my question is for _her_ and _only her_ to answer. While I am perfectly aware that you are her fiancé, that does not mean you should save her all the time from the impending dangers that incessantly chase the both of you around the city."

"I hardly call a question about Shakespeare an 'impending danger', _sir_."

The old professor didn't notice that the reference of respect at the end of the sentence escaped his student through gritted teeth, and so his stern frown slowly twisted into a smirk, one that had terrorized thousands of students since the 1970's.

"Miss Tendo," he repeated for the second time, ignoring Saotome's remark, "would you be _kind_ enough to state lines five to nine of Sonnet 18? I certainly do not want to send a top-ranking student like you outside to carry buckets for the rest of the period…"

"Please, Fukuda-sensei," Sayuri interrupted, abruptly standing up and not bothering to raise her hand, "Let me. 'Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, and often is his gold complexion dimmed, but thy eternal summer shall not fade.'"

Professor Fukuda raised a gray, pointed eyebrow in displeasure. "Wanting of two lines. For Shakespeare's sake, what has become of the youth today? Hopeless, insolent, dense…"

_The clouds are dense today. Wonderful._

She won't have to water the plants tonight.

And then there were the many little robins she had started to count the moment she became bored out of her wits. Those little flying things might as well have been advertising the great cotton candy empire to all on Earth who care. The soft, cool breeze entered the window and tickled her ears with the twittering of the jovial feathered creatures.

"How are you, little guy?" Akane whispered to the lone red robin that had just perched on the windowsill. She noticed a pretty little black spot on its breast. "Others bullied you?"

It gave a short series of chirps, and she giggled demurely, not wanting to attract attention, especially the professor's. "I'm dying of boredom, that's how I am. They're talking about personification and sonnets and love."

_And I beg to differ._

The robin cutely tilted its head in askance, sending bright ideas to Akane's head about taking it home for P-chan to play with. "Well, I just don't feel like talking about love and related crap. And if anyone has a problem with that, he'll have my fist for lunch."

The object of her attention fluttered on its spot, understanding the threat that the girl in front of him was stating. It ruffled its feathers a bit before she gave an explanation. "I'm not… comfortable with the words _true_ and _love_ together in a sentence, or a fragment, or a phrase. I used to be, but that was a very long time ago when I was thirteen and no guy – not a single one – ever called me names. I was the princess and I could have chosen any boy I wanted."

This time another red robin alighted on the windowsill, wanting to join the conversation. Akane, always glad to share with friends who would never divulge her secrets unlike her sly sister Nabiki, happily continued her dialogue. "But I didn't, because I believed in _true love_. I believed that one day, my prince would arrive at my doorstep and sweep me off my feet and passionately kiss me for the first time and bring me to places and heights I haven't been before…"

The birds' necks were outstretched as they seemed to have immersed themselves into her heightening emotions. Awed with the beauty she showed with just a dreamy smile, they unblinkingly stared at her lovely face and held on to every word she said.

"…and then that damn martial artist stepped into my life, became my fiancé and destroyed all my childhood dreams of an utterly handsome, intelligent, gentlemanly, serene, bronze-skinned, stallion-riding, smiling-faced prince knocking on my bedroom door and taking me to the stars._"_

Her feathered friends' postures slumped considerably, and so did hers.

"I know there's no way out of this, unless one day our stubborn fathers miraculously realize that Ranma and I are as compatible as a saddle and a refrigerator. But I just…" she paused, lowering her voice even more, "I wish that I'd get to find out who my true love is. I know I'm doomed to a life of a forced marriage, but knowing that my true love isn't as tactless and rude and horrible as Ranma could be sometimes, I'd feel a little better. Then I could just let the whole thing go and marry the gender-switching ape."

The cool wind blew a little strongly, making her dark blue hair fly behind her before resting just a little below her shoulders. "I just wish to _know_. I mean, maybe I've known him all this time! I can't take it if I died not knowing who he is, not noticing that he's been dancing naked right in front of me while I just passed him by."

Delighted tweeting answered her as the wind blew harder, making the papers inside the classroom tousle violently in their place, threatening to scatter across Nerima. The harsh current of air was also the cause why Akane's two little friends were blown off the windowsill, leaving her with her own bored musings.

Her self-worth wouldn't have been affected if she were whispering to her seatmates, Akane realized. But NO – she had to engage in a secret talk with the red robins because they were the only ones willing to listen.

_My life is as exciting as a dust bunny._

If her true love were here, they'd be joining martial arts tournaments together and winning and dining out and running through a field of lavenders and–

"–sleeping! Not to mention talking to those birds like some lunatic. Wake up, drool face, you're drowning the planet. And wipe yourself first before facing me because I don't wanna hang around with someone whose mouth is frothing. That would injure my social status big time, and it's gonna be your fault, you drooling personification of a mule!"

Akane slowly lifted her head from her desk and arranged her windswept hair.

"As if you have a social life, stupid," she droned, groggily looking around the classroom and finding nobody except an unimpressed-looking Ranma standing beside her. "Where's everyone?"

"Oh, they left fifteen minutes ago, because that's when class ended," he replied mockingly, wiping the side of her lips with his handkerchief.

She smacked his hand away. "I _don't_ drool, unlike you." Rubbing her temples to reduce her lethargy, she started packing the disordered books and notes on her desk. "So what were you doing for the past fifteen minutes with only a boring, sleeping me as your company in the room?"

He turned around, determined to hide the traces of a light blush that had begun to spread across the bridge of his nose, and leaned on the door's frame after a few hasty steps across the room.

"Hurry and stand up, you drooling snail. It's bad enough that I saved your ass during English time, so don't let me carry it all the way home."

Zipping her bag close and roughly standing up, she made her way to the door and stopped right in front of her fiancé, less than an inch of space separating their bodies as she stood on tiptoe.

"Ranma," she whispered softly in his ear, her sleepy voice bordering on unplanned seductiveness and making the hairs on his neck stand on end in excitement, "you are…"

Her body sagged against him and her hand traveled to the back of his neck, gently drawing spirals with her finger and in the process sending shivers from Ranma's spine all the way down to a twitching cluster of muscles below him that he had been miserably trying to control for the past couple of weeks whenever she did things like this.

_Damn women and their seductive voices and knowledge on the male anatomy…_

"Such an IDIOT!" she screamed, disabling his auditory nerves, taking out her omnipresent mallet and hitting him hard on the head, causing him to fall into a twisted heap on the floor. "DUMMY! TACTLESS FREAK! _BAKA_!" For every word, her mallet struck the previous bump on his head, making it more bruised than ever and causing his sight to swim and darken.

"God, woman!" he yelled spitefully as he managed to pull himself up despite the almost unbearable throbbing in his cerebellum. "We've known each other for a very long time, and that's the way you treat me after saving you from an overnight stay in this pervert-infested school?"

Akane rubbed her bleary eyes and stared at him blandly. "Thank you, then, for saving me from the school perverts and making me come home where you can perform your perversions on me."

Before his open mouth could shoot a harsh name in defense and his shaking fist could punch anything hittable, she had walked down the corridor, leaving him to continue his incoherent, angry stuttering until he decided to follow his punisher.

Because, of course, he had no choice.

o

o

She was stuck, and she had no choice.

She was in a car traveling down an unpaved road under the rain when suddenly her front wheels fell into a pool of mud. Her car refused to budge even when she reversed it, so the wheels created a rut.

She was stuck in a _rut_, of all things. Why couldn't she have been stuck in a beach resort instead? The gods were cruel enough to trap her in a bloody rut.

And although at first she felt totally mad and stupid and destructive, she soon enjoyed Norah Jones on the stereo mingling with the rhythmic pitter patter of the rain against the roof and the windshield of the car. Maybe she could have gone on this way until the sun finally decided to stop playing hide and seek and dried up the mud for her easy maneuvering, if the rain didn't act like a bitch and ruin her life.

That was exactly how Akane felt about her life.

Her _love_ life, so to speak.

She was stuck with Ranma, and she had hated it down to the last word their fathers exchanged when she and Ranma weren't born yet. She hated the way arrogance radiated from him, the way he drew girls to himself like he were a magnet and they were paperclips twisted in different manners to show him how _flexible_ they were, the way he could come up with names to call her whenever they had petty arguments that grew to the size of the Eiffel Tower…

And then she puzzled over it.

At first she wondered how peculiarly her anger would abate once he knocked on her door, entered her room and muttered a sincere apology (but not before she directed the remains of her fury by hurling her books at him). After that, she realized that she has grown to love it when he grabbed her hand and walked her home or to the fish ball stand where he'd treat her once or twice a week if he felt guilty about making her feel bad.

More than occasionally since two months ago, she enjoyed seeing Ranma's tense reactions when she whispered things in his ear, held him and stuck herself to him in the right places to have him stutter like a gauche idiot. In return, Ranma began doing the same – he never failed to make her gasp when he came out of nowhere and held her from behind, muttering things she wouldn't even dream him of saying while he teased her lips with kisses that always brushed, but never fully touched.

And she didn't love Ranma.

There were countless times when she felt like she did, when she felt like he had loved her, too. Of course, that was before she decided to grow up and make her mind up about him. He was just a guy whose hormones were raging uncontrollably, and she was the main object of his awareness plainly because she lived with him, making her very… _convenient_, unlike his friend-only Ukyou, his deranged admirer Kodachi and his killer bitch Shampoo. And same went for her as well – it wasn't just the guys who had those urges in the middle of class. So both of them did these things to each other simply because… well, they had no one else.

After more than a year of being with Ranma, she was smart enough to believe this.

"Roof shingles perfectly fitting your crooked spine, dear?"

She didn't look away from the twinkling stars scattered across the dark sky.

"No, but they will after I put your skin underneath me. And don't _dear_ me, jerk."

"Hey, what's with the hostility?" Ranma asked, his voice sounding hurt and defensive. "And if you wanted to lie down on my faultlessly muscled chest and abs, why didn't you say so earlier? You can lie down on me all you want…"

"No, I meant skinning you alive and then putting your skin under me to serve as a comforter," she explained flatly as if she were stating the Theory of Relativity. She got up. "And for future reference, your _faultlessly muscled chest and a_– ah…"

She trailed off, her mouth hanging slightly open as her eyes landed on a half-naked Ranma, his faultlessly muscled chest and abs greeting her with full strength, definition, maleness and utter gorgeousness as it glistened with sweat.

He snapped his fingers just in front of his abdomen and brought her attention to his smirking face. "You were saying?"

She shut her mouth and narrowed her eyes. "I wouldn't have sex with you in a hundred years."

His smirk mingled with surprise. "Whoa, who said anything about having sex? You're getting a little naughty, Akane, and I don't think you would've said that if those thoughts didn't occupy your dirty mind earlier…"

"You were being _suggestive_," she morosely mumbled, quirking an eyebrow at his torso.

"Don't you think your hormones and temper are a little outta control? I wasn't being suggestive with my perfect body – I just wanted to get some fresh air up here after sweating it out in the dojo. And since you mentioned it… if not in a hundred years… dya believe in future life? We can have sex a hundred and one years from now, if ever we meet again and you're not a rough, grouchy tomboy."

Ranma laughed at his own daringness in using the three-letter word in front of her, especially when the act involved him and her. He was never _this_ daring until a couple of months ago when he figured that they were mature enough to talk about it without ignorance and immaturity butting in. Besides, she was his fiancée, and they're going to have to do it someday, right?

"I'll have sex with my _true love_ and not with a pompous ass like you," she sniped, passing him and entering her bedroom window. "And we'll call it _making love_, because of obvious reasons!"

"Well goodnight to you, too!"

Irritated, he plopped on the spot where she previously lay and frowned at the stars.

_What the hell's wrong with her today?_

First, she drifted off in the middle of Fukuda the Terrible's class. Akane Tendo _never_ drifted off. Then she was too morbid with the skinning alive thing – she could be violent sometimes, but not _morbid_. They haven't been this harsh with name calling since half a year ago! She wasn't the sweet looking, peacefully sleeping Akane he was staring at during dismissal time… the real Akane had been abducted by aliens while he wasn't looking.

And to make things more peculiar, what was with the making love with her true love thing? _He's_ her fiancé and she'll do it with _him_, not with her true love! And–

Shit, the stars were laughing at him.

_SHIT!_

A terrible realization giving him a headache more painful than when she pummeled his head five times this afternoon, Ranma landed right outside Akane's window in one jump and knocked loudly against the glass.

Akane almost fell off her seat in front of the desk where she had been studying. Ranma's face was tinted with impatience, frustration, and wanting an explanation. She slammed her book close and flipped the lock of the window to let in a storming Ranma.

"Whaddya mean you'll have sex with your true love and not with a pompous ass like me?" he demanded.

She stood up from her chair and fearlessly faced him, matching the volume of his voice. "I mean I'll have sex with my true love and not with a sex-starved, Hiroshi-and-Daisuke-influenced, hopeless, pompous ass like you!" Her last word came with an accusing finger that poked hard at the middle of his chest.

He was speechless, and his irate face diminished to an unintended, childish pout.

"I ain't your true love?" he asked, his voice subsiding into that of a seven-year old who had just found out that Santa Claus didn't give him any presents for Christmas.

The anger vanished from her features to be replaced by a pink blush as her eyes focused on an unpaired white sock on the floor.

"I ain't sex-starved," Ranma muttered after a minute of silence. "I'm saving my first for somebody special. I just act that way because… _you_ act that way sometimes, so I think there's nothing wrong about acting like it when you're acting that way, too. And it's just the hormones, just like you said a coupla months ago. Hiroshi and Daisuke ain't bad influences, and you know that 'cause you grew up with them. I may be pompous and an ass sometimes, but I ain't _hopeless_." His expression softened as his voice mellowed down. "And you know that too, don't you?"

She didn't have to think.

"Yes, I know that. Please leave now."

His other question unanswered, Ranma walked towards the window, closing it and securing its lock before walking across the room. On the doorknob his hand rested weakly before finally turning it with a disenchanted sigh and closing the door behind him.

_Maybe it's her time of the month_.

That's why she was moody, because all girls are like that just before they turn into not-game, abdomen cramp-suffering killjoys. Tomorrow, Ryouga's going to try harder to kill him because when he sees the blood on Akane's sheets, he'd think that Ranma had sex with her without her consent. The brainless pig.

o

o

_Maybe it's my time of the month._

Akane opened her window to let the warm evening breeze in and collapsed on her bed, where her pet piglet P-chan was already fast asleep.

_Why the heck did I start on this whole true love crap, anyway?_

That was such a long time ago, some silly childhood dream. She knew she didn't have to apologize to Ranma for being grumpy because he knew she could be like that sometimes, but maybe baking him a cake will make things better between the two of them.

No, of course he wouldn't eat it.

Who was she kidding? After more than a year of vainly making him eat her cooking, she's given up. He said that her food will make him bulimic, and she didn't want his barf all over the house. Poor Kasumi will be the one to suffer the most.

A sequence of soft chirps made her turn her head towards the window.

_What in the…_

She got up and hurried to the little figure on her study table. "You followed me all the way here!"

The red robin fluttered animatedly on the spot. Akane knew that this was the same robin because it had a black spot on its breast, unlike the others in the flock that didn't. "How did you know that I live here?" she asked in awe, scooping up the little ball of red fluff with her hands and sitting on the edge of her bed.

Her newfound friend didn't answer but instead held out a thin leg, where a small rolled-up note she didn't notice earlier was tied. "What's this?" she muttered in curiosity, untying the white string, putting the bird on her bed and wondering who could have sent the letter. She opened the light brown parchment and she found it small – in fact, it must have been only about four inches long.

She gasped in awe upon reading the tiny, scrawny script:

"_For years you have searched for the one_

_Until you believed that he was indeed gone._

_But heaven smiles, your dreams are not dead;_

_Emotions of childhood are just hidden in your head._

_Because of your heart's desire and Fate's deviousness_

_The gods will not make you wait for him to confess._

_He whom you are looking for will show up one day_

_Bare, clear, and open – so to say._

_Only you will know who he is and his true form_

_For in others' eyes, he follows the covered norm._

_Thus, fortunate being, with the message from this dove,_

_Believe… and you shall know your one and true love."_

"Oh. My. God," she mumbled in disbelief.

It simply couldn't be. She knew what she was doing in pouring her heart out to this robin during Fukuda's lecture, but it wasn't for the reason that she wanted it to actually _understand_ her human words and reply in the form of a piece of parchment! She just wanted to talk to somebody – _anybody_ – because her boredom made thoughts fizz randomly around her head, and if she didn't talk about them, she'll end up screaming things on impulse during class hours.

"B-but…" she stuttered, reading the poem for the sixth time and focusing her eyes from the innocent-looking bird to the poem, and back to the waiting robin. "But you're not… you're not a _dove_," she said stupidly.

The red robin froze in incredulity. It might have thought that the human girl in front of him was being unintentionally stupid, or it might have thought that she was just a slow-minded twin of the one from this afternoon. And so, in an effort to appease Akane's growing confusion, the feathered messenger lifted its left wing and pointed to the lower part of the parchment.

Akane didn't see it before. How could she not, if it was as small as something written in Vladimir Script size _six_? She had actually brought it really close to her eyes before she could read the same pointed writing that said, as if the sender had expected her to not understand the poem:

"_Your true love will be naked when you see him."_

"Oh," Akane mouthed, finally getting the meaning of it. She was always good at analyzing summaries, whether it was Homer or Chaucer or even Dickens with his freakishly long and wordy stories.

Just as her bafflement about the poem was disappearing–

"Who sent this?" she asked, more baffled, resting the paper on her lap and looking at the robin that was comfortably making itself home on her blanket. "And _why?_"

The bird twittered shortly, as if to say that it had no idea, or if it did, it wouldn't tell her. Before she could ask for an explanation, it stood up, flapped its wings and flew out of the room.

Mouth agape, she stared at the open window with her mind swimming with confusion.

She believed in magic. Of course, how could she not, when she grew up in one magical mess of a cockpit called _Nerima_? There simply was magic – good and bad – brewing everywhere, from the big clock in school to the cash register in the bookstore… and heck, there was definitely magic even in their own toilet bowl!

But somehow, she found the recent event hard to believe. It was too much of a coincidence that the same bird listened to her crappy rants, followed her home and gave her a poem about finding out who her true love is. The fact that he would be naked the moment she saw him didn't help, either – her true love will _never_ be a naked pervert, or a guy who simply didn't want anything to cling to himself and ignored the scandalized looks of the people around him.

Akane finally made up her mind.

"Crap," she snorted.

Taking a deep breath, she closed her window and inserted the small parchment under one of the schoolbooks on her table. After switching the lights off, she snuggled beside a still sleeping P-chan (who miraculously showed no signs of having been disturbed by the little red robin and the conversation Akane had with it) under her yellow blanket, gazed at the multicolored glow-in-the-dark stars plastered on her ceiling and tried to recall the quadratic formula she was studying before Ranma had interrupted her. As she expelled the rest of her thoughts about the letter the robin gave her and drifted off to sleep, her mind buzzed with dreams about radical signs, pigtails, and red feathers.

o

o

Loud, quick rapping on wood awoke Akane with a start.

"It's your turn in the bathroom, Akane!" the morning-hoarse voice of Nabiki Tendo half yelled from the other side of the door.

"I'm still slee– whoa!" Akane's elbow hit the floor as she fell off the bed. She struggled to get out of the blanket that had slowly constricted her overnight. She cursed a few times as she rolled on the floor to unwind the blanket around her. And, of course, as sure as she was that the sky is blue because its wavelength enables it to be the most scattered color in the atmosphere, her day was _not_ going to turn out good. It never did whenever she had to do the rolling routine in the morning and ended up with her hair all over her face.

Something kept nagging from the back of her head as she got up from the floor. She tried to dismiss it, convincing herself that it was just a dream, but for some reason she looked under the thick mathematics book on her study table. It wasn't like her brain told her to do so; in fact, it would have made more sense if her hand had a mind of its own, like it had looked under the book for a very important reason – one that had stayed with her throughout the dreams she had last night – only she couldn't remember.

She didn't find anything and found herself feeling very disappointed.

Her eyes landed on the mirror that stood on her desk… and that one thing she found brought back all the memories of yesterday that seemed to exist only in her dreams if she didn't see…

A tiny red feather on the tip of her nose.

_Bloody hell_, Akane thought bewilderedly, picking the little thing and holding it in front of her eyes. _That wasn't a dream?_

She fumbled under the other books on the table and didn't find the small brown parchment from last night. No, that couldn't be – she was _so_ sure that she inserted it under her math book! Where the hell was that poem, the one that told her that she will see her true love naked?

"C'mon, ya slow-witted chick!" Ranma's voice rang from the hallway. "Wake up before I decide to go first!"

She yanked the door open and found herself face-to-face with Ranma who happened to be standing just outside her door. Her eyes narrowed, but then she remembered the shouts they exchanged last night and quickly let go of the thought of greeting him with her mallet.

"Morning," she mumbled, calmly walking past him towards the bathroom like he were a harmless statue with his mouth shut. Ranma could only blink after her, wondering where her vehemence last night went.

_Maybe yesterday was the last day of her time of the month,_ he thought hopefully. _Maybe today her female hormones wouldn't be as brutal as they were, and she'll be back to the nice Akane._

Ranma went back to his room to steal a few snores before Akane finished with her bath.

A puzzled Akane, still in her yellow pajamas, scratched her head on the way to the bathroom down the hallway. Was she losing her touch? Had hanging out with Ranma finally revealed its side effects – delusions, hallucinations and the like? Was last night just a dream, and the fingernail-sized feather she found on her nose was just a nasty, rebellious pimple?

She touched her nose in panic. It was as smooth as her unblemished cheeks.

_Oh God, what's happening to me?_

With her eyes directed at the floor in deep thought, she was about to open the door to the bathroom, when someone opened it first – from inside.

She saw a pair of wet feet.

Her eyes traveled up to the legs. Judging by the muscles and a few battle scars, the person in front of her was positively male. Beside his right thigh, a yellow shirt, a pair of dark green trousers and a patterned bandana dangled from his hand.

Her eyes went higher for a fleeting second – and it took that fleeting second to absorb and embed that image permanently in her mind – and quickly moved up to a dripping, muscled torso… up some more to a jaw that had fallen significantly… and finally locked with the man's shocked brown eyes.

"A-Akane-san!"

She didn't know whether to scream or faint.

And since was too indecisive, the gods made the decision for her.

Halfway through a deep breath that prepared her to scream, Akane Tendo fell unconscious on the floor.

o

o

**Author's Notes:** Yes, him again. It's always him first, then the other guy – what's his name again? Ran... mo? mi? me? mu? Ah, ma. _Ranma. _Because, of course, Ranma loves Akane, and Akane loves Ranma _forever_, and they have no choice.

And I just love it. Dontcha?


	2. Confessions

**Title: **Naked

**Author: **Trevelyan Duke

**Summary: **She just wishes to know, you know? She couldn't take it if she died not knowing him. Maybe her true love was dancing naked right in front of her all along, but she was just too caught up with Ranma and his body to notice.

**Author's Notes:** Hahahahaha! I bet youreyebrows are twitching now, eh? I was just thinking, before apocalypse dawns unto the world tomorrow, at least I should do something nice today. So here. I am updating. Tadaaaah!

I fell in love. Kinda. Thus, _yay! _I go to the gym now, and I am telling you, the GYM is a cool place to expand your social network. And sorry for not updating for eons. Graduation practices were a taaaall wall that prevented me from touching my laptop. Now it's summer in the tropics and lots of island getaways and no time and reunions and blah... Gah.

**Disclaimer:** Junior-Senior prom. I've spent the last of my savings on my attire. Duke be poor now, an' he hunch out back, away from de people wid wallets bursting wid money.

**Also: **Thank you _so much _for the fab reviews! I LOVE you all.

This chapter is very much connected to _Episode 131, Wretched Rice Cakes of Love. _So you all get it now, I highly suspect. And it's sorta long, I think.

o

o

**Chapter Two: _Confessions_**

_"All great truths begin as blasphemies." _–_George Bernard Shaw_

_o_

o

Tip, tap, tip, tap.

"Ya think I was too hard on him?"

Tip, tap, tip, tap, tip, tap.

He lowered his hands from the back of his head and jumped beside her, joining her pace.

"Maybe he won't find his way to the dojo this time. I kicked that bastard far."

"Don't call him that," she said rather harshly, her eyes fixed on the middle of the road with a bit of absentmindedness. "It wasn't Ryouga's fault."

"So now you're defending him? And what did you do when you saw me like that the first time we met? You didn't say, 'Oh, not your fault, don't worry.' You glanced at my dick and screamed at me and hated me for the rest of the damn months!"

"And what makes you think I don't hate you _now_, you insolent jerk?"

Ranma was about to open his mouth but stopped.

She exhaled loudly – _Oh, Ranma, not those puppy eyes again!_ – then smiled and hooked her arm into his as they continued walking, causing him to forget the pang of emotional hurt he felt a second ago.

"Sorry," she murmured. "I'm sorry about last night."

"What about last night?" he asked, decreasing their pace and wanting to stretch time.

"Uhm, you know… callingyousex-starvedandthewholetruelovecrap," she finished hastily. "Hurry up, we'll be late for school!"

She unhooked her arm from his and prepared to sprint, but he suddenly wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her back to their slow ambling.

"Ain't you just a sweet little thing?"

"Drown me in your sycophancy and you'll find yourself naked–"

"With you in a locked room?" he suggested shrewdly, tightening his hold.

"–in your girl form with Happosai in a locked room."

He rested his forehead on her temple. "You hate me _that _much?" he whispered artlessly.

It had taken some time for them to get used to this kind of innocent affection, and he was not letting the prospect of Akane taking out her mallet stop him from being close to her as possible.

Because her skin was always glowing and wonderful and smooth like freshwater in the sunlight, and it was hard not to fall into a trance whenever she was near.

_Or, _he figured, _it's her waist._

The way his arms fit just right around it, like somebody made sure it had the right circumference for his arm length.

Akane snorted, trying to cover up the tingle she felt when his breath tickled her ear. "Maybe."

"But not to the point of not telling me what the true love thing was about. Because you told me last year that you feel like you can tell me everything. So if you ain't telling me now, that would make you a liar. A big fat liar with big fat thighs and big fat arms and a big fat ass–"

She stopped (and glared), and Ranma did as well, but his arm didn't leave her waist even when he removed his brow from her temple in order to see her expression.

Her features softened as she turned to look at his façade.

A sturdy jaw framed a pair of wonderful, pinkish lips that always appeared so full and kissable whenever he pouted or smiled. His nose was the perfect length and size for his face, and it always cutely sniffed when he found something disapproving or awkward (it also superciliously stuck up in the air whenever he was throwing an insult).

And – _OhmyGodwhattheheckamIdoingstaringathimlikethis and whycan'tIstopitstupidstupidAkane _– his eyes. Deep orbs of blue and gray, as captivating as two crystal balls produced from the fathoms below. They were the reason why she had almost fallen deeply for him a hundred times, once he started exploring her soul with his gaze without even knowing he was doing it.

If what the poem said was true, then she and those eyes were not meant for each other. An invisible hand gripped her heart and stopped her breath and hurt terribly for a fleeting moment.

And then she smiled. It was a mild smile, and she felt that it looked grateful and comforting to him as she found herself brushing his bangs with her fingers and looking pensively at his face.

"True love was a dream," she said finally, removing his arm from around her and resuming her walk to school.

To Ranma, her smile held a tinge of regret and guilt.

"Hey, wait up!" he called, catching up with her after convincing himself that he was just seeing things. "What's with the drama? Watched too much soap operas lately?"

She chuckled. "No. I just had a weird dream last night."

"Oh, okay. So which one's weirder?"

"What do you mean?"

"I meant which one's weirder, the dream or Ryouga's thing this morning?" he asked, not bothering to hide a grin.

"Ranma!"

He laughed. "What? Don't go denying that, I ain't six! I know you saw it. And I'm sure it must've been a terrible experience – _Ryouga _of all people! It should have been more enjoyable if you saw mine instead…"

Punching his arm and trying in vain to suppress a blush, she scoffed emphatically, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Course ya do, you've been telling me that you know where men hide their _pulsating_ _energy _and that you're not afraid to kick the life out of it–"

"Oh, shut up."

"Don't tell me that Ryouga's was the first you've ever seen!"

"Of course not!" she snapped defensively.

Ranma's eyes widened. "You've seen other men naked?" he demanded hotly.

Akane realized that the tables had turned, and so she laughed. "Well… _yeah_."

"Who the hell are they? Tell me so I could cut theirs off and–"

"Tatewaki Kuno, seventh grade. Our class joined some of the upper years in a trip to some hot spring resort, and the next thing I knew, Kuno was standing naked in front of me."

"Damn him! So he saw _you _naked?"

"No, I had a towel wrapped around my body. Whassamatter, you _jelly?_"

Ranma frowned. "Stop teasing. You won't be smiling when you find out that Kuno can't bear children anymore after I cut _his _off."

"So you're jealous?" she ragged in a high-pitched tone, playfully nudging his ribs with her elbows.

"No, I just think that seeing Kuno like that totally polluted your innocent lil' mind at an early age…"

She _hah!_-ed as if to say that he was pathetic as an anchovy. "Of course not. I enjoyed everything I saw!"

The back of his head hit the cold.

"You're lying."

"I'm not!" Akane said, laughing even harder. "And I was just so… _amazed_ at Ryouga's display this morning. It was even bigger and longer than Kuno's!"

A scandalized look plastered itself onto Ranma's face. "You're friggin' impossible!"

"No, honey," she whispered in his ear, her voice low and purring all of a sudden, "just turned on."

She lightly brushed her lips against his cheek.

And with an impish snigger, she pinched the same spot – _hard._

"Ow!"

Akane dashed to the direction of Furinkan High School, guffawing, her school skirt fluttering behind her.

"Come back here!" Ranma shouted, running after her. "Damn woman! You're an annoying tomboy, ya know that?"

"I do!" she answered a few meters away, trying her best to pick up speed and not fall into Ranma's hands – otherwise, she was sure he'd do something just as mean to be equal. "But at least I'm an annoying tomboy who makes you moan with desire and wet your–"

She was confident. She was fast. He couldn't catch– Oh God, Akane, run for your life!

Grab. Fumble. Rip.

Ack!

Thump.

"Damn, what was that for?" Ranma demanded.

"You almost friggin' ripped my uniform!" she whined.

"So you almost friggin' _split my head open_?"

"You deserved it."

Poke.

"Let go of me. And stop that."

One of his hands was wrapped around her arm. The other had a perpendicular finger that played the role of the annoying poking thing.

Poke poke.

"Are you anorexic?" he asked curiously, disturbed.

"That's my _spine_, stupid. It doesn't have fat. And I _don't _have fat, even if you poke–"

–lower. Poke.

Whack!

"OW!"

"Pervert!"

"I was just trying to prove you wrong! The world is in need of opposition, ya know. It just ain't good if everyone agrees on everything."

She jerked her arm away and adjusted her murdered collar. "And your point is?"

"You have fat." His eyes were bland and very 'the world is round and not flat, and _you have fat'_.

Whack!

"I didn't say _you're _fat, idiot! I said you _have fat!_ Just as I have fat in my–"

Sniff, sniff.

Sakura-mochi. Sweet-smelling, carnation pink, sinfully delicious sakura-mochi. The smell was driving her insane.

_Must. Eat. Sakura. Mochi!_

"Get your sakura-mochi here! Guaranteed to lift you to the heavens, or your money back!"

Ranma felt Akane's aura change. It was warm and kind and sunny, and so not ogreish and flaming hot. It was pretty, what with her sweet smile, eyelashes batting, hand tugging on his sleeve.

"I want," she whimpered pleadingly, using her cutest voice possible that sounded like a munchkin princess.

He shielded his eyes with one hand. "No." The last time he ate one of those, he ended up with a big X mark on his forehead, and Ryouga, the lucky idiot, ended up with cherry blossom petal marks. _Which were supposed to be the sign that he was destined for Akane._ Oh gods, the magnitude of dread Ranma felt that day...

"Please? I promise not to whack you anymore. Today. _Please?"_

No. There was no way he was buying her rice cakes. He was broke. And he planned on not talking to her for the rest of the day for whacking him lots of times this morning.

But her voice, and her tugging, and her hand on his chest her hand on his cheek her hand on his pigtail–

No! He blocked his sight from her innocent-looking kitten eyes–

He took a peek.

"_Please, Ranma-kun?"_

Bat eyelashes, bat eyelashes. And the lips. Shiny.

"_N-no?_" he whimpered helplessly.

She beamed.

And so as the vendor appeared on the corner, Akane practically dragged her fiance to where the old man was.

"Ohayou!" Akane greeted him. "We'd like six sakura mochi, please."

"Ah!" he said, flashing her a toothless grin as he took a grumpy Ranma's money. "_Miss, you're in luck._"

And he winked.

_Something familiar about that wink_, Akane puzzled.

Receding hairline. Semi-tattered clothes, wooden staff, a big bag of stuff, probable case of osteoporosis, _'Miss, you're in luck'._

And...

_Robin?_

The very same robin – the one with the black spot on its chest – perched on the vendor's shoulder.

Akane blinked.

_This old man, and the robin, and _– _where...?_

The red robin was gone.

"Thanks, old man," Ranma droned in a fruitless effort to appear cheerful as he received the box of mochi from the vendor. "Come on 'Kane, we're gonna be late for – _you havin' an epilepsy?"_

"I'm trying (blink)... to make it (blink blink)... _reappear _(blink blink blinkblinkblinkblinkblink)."

Ranma's face scrunched up in confusion. Akane was blinking at _the old man's shoulder._

"Ah, maybe our pretty little girl's seeing things..." the vendor cackled. "Sometimes, little girl," he began, a knowing glint in his eyes, "it's only ourselves who see what's really there. To others, what we see are... _inexistent_."

Incredulously, Akane's eyes traveled to the old man's face.

"Makes us feel rather special, eh?" he continued. "Makes us feel we have special powers, just like what my little grandson once claimed when he saw a floating sheet of plastic and thought it was a ghost. But in actuality it's what we _see _that's special, not us. The attention we give it, the time we spend thinking about it–"

"But what if..." Akane interrupted cautiously, "what if it's _me _who can't see things? What if it's the opposite, that it really exists but I can't see it?"

"Then _you're _special as well, and you share that with the object of your attention. Some would call it a delusion but in my relatively sound opinion, it's a strong _bond."_

"So it's not–" Akane blurted out, a strange feeling rapidly piling up within her. "It's _me _who's–"

"–the _fortunate being _for having had the chance to find something special! And when you finally see it and feel it between your fingers... there is no greater joy than that."

"Oh my God."

_Fortunate being. He said _fortunate being. _The robin's letter had that, too!_

"And so I advise you little girl, to _never _let it go the moment you find it."

"B-but how do I know that I've found it? What if I _think _I've found it, because all the signs point to it, but I wanted to see something else? What if the signs were actually wrong?"

The vendor smiled considerably. "Ah, the signs are _never _wrong. You just have to squint to see the right ones."

Desperate. Buzzing. "But how do I know it's _the truth?"_

"Look at the world!" he laughed with gusto, like seeing the world everyday was the greatest thing that ever happened to him. "Out there, around you, right in front of you is the _naked truth!_"

Akane was so wonderfully overwhelmed that her smile reached her ears.

o

o

"You are weird," Ranma stated, his words muffled by the two sakura mochi in his mouth as he and Akane continued brisk walking to school. "You tumbled over your head with the crap the old guy was blabbing about!"

Akane mock-pouted, hiding half a smile. "I'm sorry. But if you don't mind, please tell me... who transforms into a girl when he gets hit with cold water?"

He frowned at her. "I'm not the one who gets dicks shoved at me in the morning."

"If that happens to someone, she wouldn't be called weird. She'd be called _hot_. And before you react, I want to say thanks (in advance) for the compliment."

"You," Ranma forced, swallowing a huge ball of mochi into his throat, "are _weird_."

o

o

Akane's Friday had been great. Although she fainted earlier and was almost late for class with her hair tousled all over her head because of a little scuffle she had with her fiancé, she didn't drift off to sleep in any of her subjects and actually aced three short quizzes about the quadratic formula, Thailand's geographical features, and the properties of a laser beam, respectively. She even narrated Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 – not a line or word erroneous – with momentous emotions that amazed everyone who listened, thus earning back Fukuda the Terrible's respect.

Once or twice in the middle of class she glanced outside the windows, but she didn't see any trace of the red robins. Instead, the sky was decked with bluebirds a-fluttering, happy with their decision to migrate to the country.

But if the robins weren't there, then would that mean that they only existed in her imagination, and the whole thing about seeing her true love naked was just a fallacy?

Would that mean that­ Ryouga (Oh God, Ryouga. Why did it have to be him that she saw? Why not – _oh, don't even go there, Akane_) was not her true love? She needed proof!

Oh, but the old man. He was _all _the proof she needed.

And now all she needed to do was squint in order to see the right signs! That would be as easy as breaking a low quality hollow block.

_But..._

When she arrived home, she instantly looked for the red feather she put down on her desk this morning, but she couldn't find it along with the poem whose lines she couldn't really remember. Finally, she slapped her forehead – she realized that she left her window open, and if the red feather _did _exist, it must have been blown away by the wind.

_Curse my stupidity,_ she mocked inwardly. A little more and she'd have been as stupid as someone who drank all the black liquid from a bottle that had a skull and a big "toxic" sign on the label.

Why did she have to be the designated cynic all the time? As if the old man wasn't enough, as if his words didn't suffice. Hah, Akane felt stupid.

"PREPARE TO DIE!"

Loud bickering from the pond snapped Akane out of her thoughts.

"Oh c'mon, Lost Boy! You know I kick perverts outta instinct especially when they make Akane faint!"

"I am _not _a pervert! This morning was an accident!"

"So what the hell were you doing greeting her a good morning with your erect–"

"Akane?"

Akane was at the edge of her seat listening to Ranma and Ryouga's squabbling outside the window, and she would have fallen off when Kasumi called her if she didn't grab the edge of her study table. The oldest Tendo offered her a slice of cheesecake for an afternoon snack and she gladly accepted it.

Without any homework – or anything at all – to do, Akane cleared her desk of all her school stuff, climbed onto the flat surface and folded her legs beneath her. In front of her was the open window, and it perfectly framed Ryouga and Ranma fighting in the backyard like a widescreen television that was screening the life or death fight scene between Hector and Achilles in _Troy_. And the plate of cheesecake she was relishing was even better than popcorn.

"Bullshit! The only reason you've been with her for the past year was because you wanted to grope her in all places with your piggy little hands while she was _asleep!_"

Ranma's last word came with a fist that missed Ryouga's face by millimeters. While Akane wondered what on earth her fiancé was talking about – because _never_ in her life did she remember sleeping with Ryouga beside her – she was incessantly stuffing her mouth with the cheesy goodness on her plate as a product of anxiousness.

"Unlike you, Saotome," Ryouga replied, violently swinging his leg towards his enemy's head, "I wouldn'tdo those things even if Akane were naked in front of me _and awake!_"

Ranma's pigtail brushed Ryouga's foot. "Dream on, ya big loser! She wouldn't undress herself in front of _Ryouga Hibiki_ if you were the last man on earth! Which ain't likely to happen, because you're gonna go before me on the day of the apocalypse!"

The fanged boy grabbed Ranma's pigtail in anger. "What do you mean by that, you no good, big mouthed, walking piece of–"

"I meant the Theory of Natural Selection, and since you ain't exactly on top of the food chain, you'll go to hell first!" Ranma turned, sweeping his feet under Ryouga and successfully pinning him on the ground.

"Then I'll drag you down with me because I can't stand the thought of leaving Akane with a disgusting pervert like you!" Ryouga gave his pigtailed nemesis a head butt, freeing himself from his grasp. However, he did not notice Ranma's grip on his collar, and as Ranma flew in the air because of the forceful hit his head took, he ripped Ryouga's shirt off.

Akane's jaw fell. She saw Ryouga naked again! What the heck were the gods trying to tell her, _that he was indeed her true love?_ Where was that red robin when she needed to untie another explanatory note from its leg?

"You destroyed my favorite shirt!" Ryouga shouted angrily.

Pulling himself from the ground, Ranma snorted. "This," he said mockingly, holding up the tattered top in his hand, "is your _only_ shirt, stupid."

"Asshole!" Ryouga lunged at Ranma with full force, preparing to use one of his most destructive techniques to smash his hated foe's face. "Bakusai Ten–"

Ranma didn't care to suppress a chortle as he simply stepped aside and tripped Ryouga with his foot. "You gotta do better than that if you wanna get your hands inside Akane's panties."

Akane felt her own anger rising as she watched her fiancé's amused face. Maybe she should reduce him to mush the moment he talks like that another time, just like the cheese in the cake…

She looked up from the plate to glower at a freshly shirtless Ranma.

Ryouga quickly got up and brushed away the small blades of grass that stuck to his face. "You're the most horrible person Akane's father could ever chose for her fiancé, violating her in word and thought! I won't let you take advantage of Akane anymore, Saotome. I swear my life on that!"

"Playing knight in shining armor, eh?" Ranma teased, not wincing an inch as Ryouga balled his fists and threateningly flexed his chest muscles.

"To the death, since I'm going against a ruthless vandal of Akane's beauty and integrity!"

"You couldn't defeat me if I were DEAD!" he scoffed, taking a step forward and positioning to fight.

"Then I'll keep trying until you die again so you can finally leave Akane! She doesn't deserve you… she deserves someone…"

"Someone like…?"

"Someone like _me_!" a fuming Ryouga yelled, charging at Ranma with pure fury burning in his eyes. "BECAUSE I," he grumbled, his fists turning as hard as cement, "LOVE HER!"

Ranma took a powerful punch to his stomach that knocked all the air out of him, sending him flying until his bare back hit the concrete wall.

Dropping the empty plate she was tensely gripping, Akane put a hand on her chest, feeling her heart beating hard.

OH. FRIGGIN. GODS.

_Ryouga loves me. _

He _loves _her. Her _true love _loves her.

One of these nights, he was going to enter her room and sleep beside her just like what Ranma accused him of doing, and then they were going to get married in one of those quickie churches in Vegas and have fanged babies, and her father will exile her from the family for not keeping her part of the pact that she marry Ranma!

She felt the cheesecake inside her tummy crawl back up her esophagus.

o

o

Something tickled her face.

She tried to shoo it away. Maybe it was just a bothersome fly, or–

Akane slowly opened her eyes.

_A red feather?_

Something chirped right next to her ear, and it brought her back to total consciousness. She abruptly sat up, looking around her room. It was very dark and only the streetlight from somewhere outside supplied the very dim light that helped her maneuver around the room and switch the lights on.

"You!" she gasped, seizing the red figure and settling it between two cupped hands. "Tell me what's happening! Why did you show up with the old man and then just disappeared? Gah, you're making my head spin with Ryouga and that stupid poem and– and that didn't happen to be just a dream, did it?"

It shook its head. Akane checked to see if there was any note tied to its leg, but there wasn't.

"No mysterious letter? No context clues about this whole paranormal thing? No sakura mochi gift from your master? You _have _to be kidding me…"

The red robin shook its head again to indicate that it was not.

"But I can't just leave things this way! I still don't know if I have feelings for Ryouga other than that of a friend, but – maybe – oh, I don't know! And I have Ranma to worry about. That stupid ape just might–"

Insistent tweeting interrupted her.

"What the hell do you want me to do, thank you for messing my brain up? I'm sorry for being a little ungrateful, but I don't even know if I'm in a stupid dream or not; the whole prospect sounds so silly… and now I don't know what to do with my true lo– with _Ryouga!_"

This time, the bird cut her short by intensely flailing its wings, at the same time pointing at the ceiling for some reason. A few flaps later, it made a weird gesture – it seemed to talk to the wing it held in front of him.

The unusually slow Akane took a few moments before she understood it as "_Why don't you talk to him?_"

She blinked.

"You know, I might consider putting you in a cage for future reference…"

The red robin defiantly puffed out its chest, emphasizing the small spot of black amidst the red, giving Akane the impression that it definitelydidn't want to be confined in a cage.

"Okay then, go. Go and find your red birdie friends and do the red birdie dance or something."

It clicked its beak as it prepared to take wing. Akane smiled apologetically, realizing how unappreciative she has been to the poor little thing. "Thank you," she muttered, patting its head. Feeling that it had done what it had to do and gotten a nice reward, it flapped its wings and soared out of the window.

As Akane looked at the bird's vanishing figure, she realized something.

_Wow. I fainted twice today. And–_

_I'VE BEEN UNCONSCIOUS FOR HOURS AND THEY DIDN'T EVEN KNOW IT!_

"What are you being grumpy for, sis?" Nabiki asked her younger sister, who was almost reducing her chopsticks to splinters. "Please pass the rice."

Akane glared at Nabiki and continued her business of making toothpicks as the horrible scratching sounds she was making was muffled by Genma Saotome's chomping of his and his son's food. She wasn't in the mood to eat – a mixture of hurt and irritation swirled inside of her. If she had been dead instead of unconscious, would they have missed it until her carcass started to smell?

"Do you have any idea where Ranma is, Akane?" Soun Tendo asked after swallowing a piece of sushi. "He was here with Ryouga this afternoon, but now they're nowhere to be found."

"I don't know," she said flatly, putting down her murdered chopsticks on the table. "I'm not hungry; I think I'll go ahead." She stood up. "The sushi smells wonderful, Kasumi," she added as her figure retreated to the dojo, not wanting to be more ungrateful than she was earlier this evening. "And you have a piece of seaweed on your nose, Uncle Genma."

Genma didn't mind it at all and continued wolfing down the precious food in front of him. It wasn't all the time that his son wasn't there to reduce his share of food.

So Ryouga wasn't anywhere to be found. How the hell could she ever talk to her true love if he kept disappearing and going around the world before he reappeared? Everything had started stressing her out… and when Akane Tendo's stressed out, she releases it all in the dojo. She planned to kick and punch and do katas the whole night until she collapsed, because then she'd be feeling too drained to think about anything.

The dojo was open. She entered and slid the door close behind her.

"Ryouga?"

"Akane-san!" a topless Ryouga exclaimed, startled. He was sitting in a corner of the room. A second ago he was clutching what seemed like a yellow rag in his hands, but when he saw Akane he quickly hid it behind his back like a kid trying to hide a broken vase from his mother.

"What's that?" Akane asked as she crossed wooden floor and sat in front of him.

"N-nothing!" Ryouga explained, impulsively holding the tattered cloth in front of her and then quickly hiding it back. "It's just– ah!" He swiftly clutched his hand, for it had been pricked by a needle inserted somewhere in the yellow fabric.

Akane took the item and examined it. It had been torn into just a few large pieces, so it was fixable. "This is your shirt, isn't it?"

He blushed. "It _was _my shirt."

She examined the stitches that Ryouga made. One sleeve was already intact and the other was halfway done, but the other parts were unfixed. "Can I sew the rest for you?" she asked.

Ryouga blushed even harder. "N-no! I mean, there's no need. I can do it myself! I don't want you wasting your time on my stupid shirt…"

"Actually," she started, smiling at him and making him blush more if it was even possible, "you'll be doing me a favor. I need some training for home economics – those stitches I made in school were horrible! I'm sure I can do a better job with your shirt. And besides, I don't have anything to do for the rest of the weekend."

"Really?" Ryouga gasped, his eyes sparkling in bliss to the point of almost crying. "You'd do that for me?"

Akane giggled. Ryouga Hibiki was just too adorable!

_Notwithstanding the fact that he's my true love._

"Sure."

"Akane-san, I promise to take care of this shirt from now on! I'll wear it everyday and wash it carefully and make it last for the years to come. I promise that!"

"You do that."

"I-I'm…" Ryouga began, taking a deep breath. "I'm sorry about what happened this morning. I was such in a hurry that I forgot to put my clothes on! Stupid me… you probably think I'm an uncivilized pervert…"

…_like Ranma._

It was Akane's turn to blush as the image of a wet and naked Ryouga flashed in her head for the umpteenth time that day. "No, it's okay!" she insisted, shaking her head to abolish the picture. "I should have knocked first, anyway. It was nobody's fault."

"So does that mean you're not mad?"

She laughed, breaking the tension between them. "Of course not! I don't have the heart to get mad at you, ever." She laid an assuring hand on his arm and stood up. "I'll go now, Ryouga-kun."

"O-okay… thank you for forgiving me and doing this for me!" he called after her retreating figure. "I owe you my life!"

"No problem," she replied as she exited the dojo. Somehow, she felt very much better that someone in this world valued her so much like a treasure chest. It made her thank her feathered friend and the old man, wherever they were, because they helped her notice this, even though she had decided to just let things stay the way they are because she didn't want complications. Complications would just mess everything more, and she didn't want that to happen.

_Speaking of complications..._

Akane checked inside Ranma's room, but there was nothing there except for a pair of futons, pillows, and blankets in complete disarray. She proceeded to her room and flopped on her bed. For a second, she mentally checked her social status – it seemed that she spent most of the day in her room and not enough time with her friends.

It was the true love thing, she totally knew. It was making her crazy and act unusual and go all Linda Blair and turn her head all the way round.

"Ow!"

Akane stopped puzzling over her attitude to listen closely.

Yep, the voice was Ranma's, all right – and it came from the rooftop.

Putting Ryouga's shirt on her bed and taking one of her small packs of wet tissue, she decided to join Ranma in another one of their exchanges of both rational and irrational philosophies and humorous whatnot. If truth be told, she had actually grown to love these rooftop moments. Usually, they came there to meditate or cool down or see the stars twinkle or just have a good laugh. And that was what Akane planned to do.

Until she saw Ranma sitting cross-legged and shirtless, trying to turn his head a hundred and eighty degrees to see his wounds.

"Ryouga kicked your sorry ass?" she asked, taking a spot beside him.

"Asshole was just damn lucky," he growled.

She leaned back to see his wounds and found them numerous and huge, concentrated in the middle of his well-built back, but shallow. "Don't you think you've grown a little… Quasimodo-ey?"

"And why's that?" he grumbled, running a finger on his bare feet.

"The injuries don't look deep. Which means your back's thick." She lightly touched a particularly long gash that stretched on the middle of his back.

"No way in hell that's happening! My posture's as straight as ever. I'm just strong– GAH! Violent tomboy!"

She snorted. "It's not like I poked it hard! You're such a weakling."

"Say that again and I'll make you regret you were born."

One of the things Ranma Saotome fully hated was when somebody called him weak. Usually he gave the damn perpetrator a piece of his mind by giving him a black eye.

"You're such a weakling."

He glared daggers at her.

"Weak. Ling," she echoed, her lips forming the words exaggeratedly.

He glared swords at her.

Because, of course, Akane Tendo was someone he could never hit in the eye.

"One of these days, I'm gonna have to throw you to the sea. Because you can't swim. And then you'll drown and the sharks are gonna eat you up. So they're happy and I'm happy, and everyone lives happily ever after."

"Oh, shut up," she plainly said, opening the pack of wet tissue and sliding behind a little for better access to his back. "Your threats to me have lost their… _threat_. A long time ago. Instead of throwing me to the sea, why don't you just take me to some beach resort? I'll have more fun."

"And why would I do spend my money on you?" he asked derisively.

"You should," she answered as-a-matter-of-factly, "because that would be our honeymoon."

_Honeymoon?_

Ranma almost choked on his saliva. "But– OW!"

Akane decided that the perfect moment to daub the wet tissue to clean Ranma's wounds would be the time he was caught very much off guard. "Sorry, sweetheart, I had to do that – or else you'll get a nasty infection that would render your back inoperative for a very long time. You should thank me! I was supposed to use this tissue for my beauty regimen, but I skipped it and decided to do your wounds first."

The smell of jasmine and alcohol lingered in the air, and Ranma took it in as Akane laughed.

"Am I not just _the perfect _fiancée?"

He bit his lip, trying not to whimper like a girl because of the pain from the pressure she was applying to his injuries and not wanting to look like a puny kid in front of her.

"Those cuts are gonna heal in a few days," he mumbled mulishly.

After a final dab that made Ranma hastily suck in air through his gritted teeth, Akane moved back in place beside him.

"Sure they will. I just cleaned them so you won't have to struggle to do it yourself, so you can sleep well tonight. Better?"

Ranma nodded and glanced at her, and she was smiling as she put the red-tainted wet tissue inside its pack and crumpled the whole thing.

"Thanks for caring," he murmured.

"Well, that's what I do," she sighed apologetically.

"That's what I've grown used to," he hastily replied. "Not a problem, really."

She giggled, and he flashed her a lopsided grin.

"Ranma, you do know that I find these conversations silly, don't you? So… mushy, maybe a bit pointless."

"Is that bad?" he asked hesitantly.

"Silly…" she said, "but nice."

"Nice. I like that."

"You do?"

"Yep. It's only here where I can be myself and talk about what I wanna talk about. My feelings just rush outta me like water from a cotton blanket straight out of the washing machine."

"Wait. On this rooftop, you talk to yourself about your feelings?"

He chuckled.

"No, dimwit. I talk to _you_ about my feelings."

"Really now?" she wondered audibly, her lips quirking into a flattered smile. "Just me?"

_Silly but nice_, Ranma repeated to himself, amused.

"Sometimes, 'Kane, I feel that I can be myself only when I'm on this rooftop with you. Not on this rooftop with Pops or Ukyou or Shampoo or – God forbid – Kodachi, or anybody and anywhere else… but on this worn out, creaky rooftop with _you_. I love every single minute of it… except the fighting tournaments."

Akane's heart had sprouted wings and fluttered happily in her chest.

"Me too. I love all of it except the fighting tournaments."

"Course you should! You're with Ranma Saotome, official heartthrob of Furinkan High and most wanted martial artist in Japan. Why wouldn't you?"

She mock-giggled. "Pompous ass."

"Well, at least that's better than 'disguised pervert', right?" he asked, a hint of disgust evident in his voice.

Akane groaned. "Not this again. Ranma, it wasn't Ryouga's fault, okay? I just walked in on him while he was getting out of the bathroom. It was a complete accident."

"Fine. But don't be surprised when one day you come running to me and screaming 'Kick the life outta that pervert!' nonstop for days."

"You always love kicking my perverted admirers' asses, don't you?"

"Yeah, 'cause _I am the knight who will fight for your honor… I'll be the hero you're dreaming of…_"

"For God's sake, stop singing! I don't want heavy rain to spoil this night!"

Ranma laughed at the annoyed look on Akane's face. "Why, what's with tonight?"

Her expression grew serious.

_No, you're not going to tell him_–

"Ranma, do you…

_Akane, NO! Shut _– _oh, SHUT _– _up! Don't even open your mou_–

"...do you love me? At all?"

_Stupid, stupid, stupid._

This startled Ranma – Akane had _never _asked that question before and he wondered what came upon her that she suddenly did – so he averted his gaze from her and directed it to a specially bright star in the dark sky. He looked like he was waiting for a sign, maybe for that particular star to fall down or rocket to some other part of the heavens. He narrowed his eyes for a clearer view and eased up after a few seconds.

"I… I don't..."

"Oh," she said in an octave higher than her normal, forcing a smile. "I'm sorry. I mean, it's been more than a year since we first met, but apparently it's not enough. I shouldn't have asked that. I can't believe I did; I feel like a prize idiot. Maybe I should go now and… and get ready for tomorrow. Wait, tomorrow's Saturday so there's no class. But still, I should go because it's getting really cold. Would that be fine if I left you here? Oh, what am I saying, of course it would be. Just take a bath if the wounds start hurting. I'll be off now. And y-you should try Kasumi's cheesecake… scrumptious, really…"

"...know," he finished.

Akane blinked.

"Oh."

She felt like a bigger prize idiot.

"And I know that you don't know if you love me, either," he added quietly.

She nodded in agreement.

"But I'd have missed out on a lot of stuff if you didn't come into my life," Ranma continued, wrapping a burly arm around her shoulders. "It's not like I'm being dependent on you or anything, but sometimes I find myself thinking how dull and miserable my life would be if I hadn't met you. Because that would mean I'd still be with brainless Pops training in the mountains, and that would just suck big time."

"Am I supposed to be happy?"

"What if I told you that I'm willing to eat your cooking and become bulimic just so you wouldn't go?"

"Would you," she began, looking strangely at him, "give up a barrel of Nannichuan just so I wouldn't leave?"

He thought for a second. And then he grinned.

"I could always go to China."

"What if Jusenkyo disappeared, and the only Nannichuan left on the planet is in that barrel?"

"Hey, you're a sadistic woman! You ain't trying to tell me that I'll never get to cure myself, are you?"

Akane chuckled, snuggling up to him. "Okay, maybe that was a toe out of the line. But what if there wasn't any choice, what if I really had to go?"

"Why are you asking that?" he asked, suddenly fearful and holding her tighter. "Are you gonna kill yourself tonight? Bloody hell, you better give it up. I'm sleeping beside you on your bed before you can do that! I'll be watching you the whole night, got that? I don't care if you call me pervert. Damn, you're such a morbid person!"

"No, stupid, of course I won't kill myself tonight! I swore that I'll cook a perfect dish first before I can finally rest in peace, or Antarctica will burn. But what if… worse comes to worst and I really have to leave? What if one day you wake up and I'm not there anymore, like maybe I just existed in your dreams and you don't really have a fiancée?"

He sighed and nuzzled his nose into her fragrant hair.

"Then I'll miss my imaginary fiancée. I'll miss her terribly and it would be as painful as hell. I'll start sleeping as often as I can so I could see her in my dreams. I'll keep teasing her and calling her names so she'd seduce me and then mallet my head, and it wouldn't hurt when I wake up. In the real world, I'll start dating lots of women and change girlfriends seven times a week…"

"Hey!"

He let out a soft laugh in her ear, making her spine shiver, just before he faced her again and saw the stars twinkling at him reassuringly.

_The stars peep behind her and peer; and I laugh to see them whirl and flee, like a swarm of golden bees._

"I'll search the world for someone who looks like the girl in my dreams." _Percy Shelley wrote that poem for you, Akane._

"Are you sure you have the heart to do that?" _He did?_

"Hell I do!" _Yes, hundred percent._

"Do you really want to leave the comfort of this dojo and all the wonderful things in Nerima?" _How sure are you?_

"I'll buy lotsa okonomiyaki from Ucchan's, and I'll be off like the wind." _Very._

"And what are you going to do when you find her?" _Thanks... I guess...?_

"Maybe I'll ask Pops to befriend her dad and engage the both of us." _Thanks is right._

"In short?" _Why?_

"If you leave, you'll give me such a terrible headache and present me the trouble of looking all over for you–" _That's the least you can do, 'cause I heard that he died after writing that poem. Some curse you brought him, huh?_

"_In short?_" _No, seriously, why?_

"In short, I'm gonna miss you badly that it would hurt so much." _Because he found you really cute. Pretty. And all the _– _whatever ya call 'em _– _synonyms._

She smiled. This time it wasn't forced or small or shy – it was wide and beautiful and very Akane.

"That will do." _Really._

"Eh?" _And I wish I could've written it, but damn. Good ol' Perce had to be born _first.

"Goodnight, Ranma." _But you find me pretty._

"Uh–" _Yes. Very much._

"Sweet dreams." _Thank you, then. Very much._

She planted a small kiss on his cheek before getting up and going back to her room via the window.

Stunned, Ranma gently touched the tingling spot where Akane's lips had been a second ago.

Finally, feeling luckier than ever, he beamed at the stars. He decided to forgo washing his face that night. Even if it meant skipping his beauty regimen – if he had any.

o

o

**Author's Notes:** Okay, so I forgot what the sakura mochi vendor looked like, so I made some typical descriptions of any old man I see walking down the street. Oh, and... I love you all. I want to take all of you home and we'll have fun in the jacuzzi and talk about Ranma and Akane and stupid Ryouga and Akane's soft, fleshy–

Ow. She whacked me. Do review... it'll abate the pain... a lot. ;)

(And Ranma? _SINGING? _That has GOT to be a screen-worthy moment.)


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